Dave’s Whiteboard

An early-morning side trip at CogDogBlog let me to discover DonorsChoose.org.

This site invites teachers to describe specific projects for which they need money, and allows donors to select such projects to donate to. Like these:

• A fourth-grade class whose students need more books in Spanish for fluent readers.
• A first-grade class needing insect specimens (and copies of The Very Hungry Caterpillar).
• Rural high-school seniors whose teacher would like to use Hamlet — the Manga Edition (in which Horatio looks a bit like Harry Potter).

The Charity Navigator gives DonorsChoose a four-star rating. DonorsChoose claims to have enabled donors in 50 states to provide $23,338,925 to 1,351,770 students.

Lots of people talk about large-scale educational reform. In the short run, though, teachers in place struggle with the realities of the classroom and don’t have the liberty to wait for the New Digital Jerusalem.

The Hamlet request is far from the only Shakespearean one. There’s quite a bit of interest in No Fear Shakespeare. I’m biased; I taught high school English in rural Kansas. Thinking of these teachers reminded me of the other pre-battle speech (not the ‘band of brothers’ one) in Henry V, only with teachers instead of the English troops:

We are but warriors for the working-day;
Our gayness and our gilt are all besmirch’d
With rainy marching in the painful field;
There’s not a piece of feather in our host…
And time hath worn us into slovenry:
But, by the mass, our hearts are in the trim…

I thought it was worthwhile shining a bit more light on this corner of the world of learning.

If you’re so inclined, you can see both speeches in the clip below. (It’s just before the battle of Agincourt, where the English were outnumbered 5 or 6 to 1.) You’ll probably recognize the first speech; the “warriors for the working day” one begins around the three-minute mark.

 

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Jen Jones’s post on Social Networking for Humans talks about how “the balance of our attention shifts back and forth between people and tools.” She mentions that she’s tried various tools that show the connections between people in her networks, but that she’s not satisfied with the results — in part because for her it’s the communication that’s important, not the hardware (and software) that facilitates it.

She reminded me of an undergrad course in modern sociological thought (hey, I’m slow getting started this morning). I enjoyed the course, though I realized even at the time that I spent about 80% swimming over my head. I had a lot of difficulty with the work of Talcott Parsons, who wrote in a language that resembles English, except that all the nouns are abstract and all the adjectives, polysyllabic.

One of his many concepts is pattern variables, “‘the principle tools of structural analysis outlining the derivation of these categories from the intrinsic logic of social action.” (See what I mean about this English-like language?) Among the five sets of such variables is the notion of specificity versus diffuseness.

Dr. Bauder explained that in a specific relationship, you have to justify including some new action or behavior, while in a diffuse relationship, you have to justify leaving something out.

She gave the example of the grocery store. In general, your relationship with the cashier is: you put the groceries on the belt, the cashier rings them up. Conversation fits into the buying-groceries relationship. You’d have to have a reason for saying to the other person, “You know, that outfit makes you look kind of heavy.”

Then Dr. Bauder asked what type of relationship exists between a teacher and a student. Thinking of the free exchanges that characterized her classes, I said, “Diffuse.”

“Okay,” she said. “What are you doing Saturday night?”

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Here’s how I see this fitting with Jen’s comments about social network tools: having someone as a friend on Facebook, following someone’s tweets, commenting often on someone’s blog — these things in themselves don’t make my relationship with that person diffuse. That requires time — as in the proverb that to know someone, you have to eat a bag of salt together.

Of course the more specific relationships have value (ideally for both parties). But the transformation of any one relationship is subtle and easily overlooked. As Jen says, “You may have thousands of virtual friends, readers and followers, but if you don’t have two-way communication with them, the connections are truly virtual and will not withstand the potential failure of the social networking tool.”

I’m not too concerned about having thousands of virtual friends. Jen’s post and my own musings remind me to focus more on what I communicate, to whom, and why; the how, to me, is far less important.

Advice photo by QwirkSilver / Kristine.

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SharpBrains has an interview (Why Smart Brains Make Stupid Decisions) with Ori Brafman, co-author of Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior.

A striking example: a professor at the Harvard Business School had his class participate in an auction — for a $20 bill. The kicker was that the winner would get the $20, but the second-place bidder, while getting nothing, would have to honor his bid.

And yes, the bidding did pass $20.

Brafman says that awareness that we can be swayed might help prevent us from being swayed. He offers the example of a highly structured job interview, less likely to influence the interviewer than the informal, what’s-your-biggest-strength approach.

A comment on this post led me to In Bias, Meta is Max at Overcoming Bias. Robin Hanson writes about an article suggesting that “being more aware of biases makes us more willing to assume that others’ biases, and not ours, are responsible for our disagreement.”

These biases or distortions are connected to our faith in our own objectivity, which brings to mind Benjamin Franklin’s observation:

So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.

A depressing observation that Hanson quotes from the Science review:

People also behave more conflictually toward those whom they suspect will be biased by self-interest. Participants in one study were instructed to consider the perspective of their adversaries in a conflict over limited resources. That instruction had the ironic effect of leading them to expect that their adversaries would be biased by self-interest, which, in turn, led the participants themselves to act more competitively and selfishly.

(Hanson provides a link to the review, but the Science site requires a subscription.)

I found the Brafman interview thanks to the latest edition of Encephalon, the brain science blog carnival. If brain-related topics, or cleverly introduced collections, tweak either of your hemispheres, take a look at Encephalon 48, The Usual Suspects, at Neuroanthropology.

Distortion photo by Photochiel / Argos Panoptes.

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In the past week or so, I came across @injenuity, Jen Jones’s blog. She writes often about viral professional development (VPD). That’s her term for “a technology, tool, or teaching strategy that is quickly spread from one person to another.” (She works with instructors from kindergarten level up, through her main focus is e-learning in higher education.)

In a post last January, Jen gave some characteristics of VPD. These included:

• Instructors learn to use the technology largely on their own and with support from each other.
• You can’t worry about those who refuse to adopt instructional technology… they need to see success from their peeres first.
• Workshops are not the foundation of VPD, although they may be one component.

If like Jen you’re someone who believes people can reap great benefit from applying tools and techniques, what can you do to help?

• Model the tools and techniques… if someone has a how-to question, send a screencast with the instructions… and a little about how you made the screencast. (Why does the name Stephen Downes come to mind?)
• Communicate at the other person’s comfort level. (I read this as, if someone’s not on Twitter or not publishing on the wiki, but they send you email or call you, then use that channel.)
• Join in when people on your personal network test tools. “Any time I can jump in on someone else’s test saves me…searching for a tool and people to try it with.”

Jen posted a follow-up just this week. She’s not sure VPD translates to organizations outside of higher ed, but it seems clear to me there’s a connection. She’s using a different angle to examine some of the things Tony Karren, Michele Martin, and others have been talking about at Work Literacy. One of the differences is that Jen’s looking at the organization, rather than the individual:

My concept of VPD describes an organizational strategy, rather than an individual personal learning environment or network…

While personal networks can have spontaneous learning events that lead to transfer of knowledge, my goal in working with VPD is to make a cultural change within a specific organization, rather than develop a personal learning network.

Most people work for organizations — 86% of all U.S. workers work for someone else, and half of them (more than 56 million people) work in organizations with more than 500 employees.

I’ve been thinking a lot about individual learning; Jen has reminded me that organizations, which need to continue their activities while accommodating the arrival and the departure of specific individuals, have their own learning needs, too.

Computer virus photo by Ted Rheingold.

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Tony Karrer is hosting the June 2008 edition of the Working/Learning Blog Carnival (about the carnival) at WorkLiteracy.  (WorkLiteracy is “a network of individuals, companies, and organizations” looking to address “a growing gap between the work practices and skills that most knowledge workers possess and the resources available to them.”)

You’re invited to share your opinions:

• Is there a gap between how knowledge workers to their work, and how they could if they harnessed different methods, tools, resources?
• If your answer’s yes, where do you see the opportunities?
• Is the issue of work literacy receiving enough attention?

In a departure from the usual blog carnival format, you can participate by posting on your own blog and sending Tony a link, or by sharing your thoughts as comments to the “host post” (where you can see more of the thinking behind this issue.

The invitation’s open through the end of June.

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